Just an idea I wanted to expand on from a question from an old Ask the Person Above You A Question thread from about six or so months ago, that I thought would be interesting to explore. Where do you think each one stands, and why? I was curious where the community laid on this matter, plus it could be a good way to organize individual head-canons.

I'mma try to keep my responses in some semblance of order, and I'll probably mention others that don't fall into the GoI page, but nonetheless are major forces in the universe, in my head-canon, at least. Feel free to change/add/omit ones from your own head that aren't explicitly on the Groups of Interest list.

Primarily Lawful (Lawful Neutral, Lawful Good, Lawful Evil)

All they care about is maintaining the natural order of the world, and protecting the more sensitive minds of the world from the supernatural.

The GOC

Same mission as the Foundation, they just believe that destruction is a better option than studying these things.

GRU-P

A mix of the above

ORIA

The law of their government and control of the paranormal is their highest concern.

The Antarctic Empire

Lawful Good

The Horizon Initiative

Spreading the Good News, one Bullet or Bible/Tanakh/Qur'an verse at a time

Unusual Incidents Unit

They follow the code of conduct for the FBI, and their hearts are in the right place, but their budget, preparedness, and common sense generally aren't. Poor bastards.

Lawful Evil

The Fifth Church

C'mon, these guys more or less worship Chthulhu and have tried to end the world on at least one occasion. Other than that, they stick to their faith

Marshall, Carter, & Dark, Ltd.

You can buy some of the darkest magics and evilest products/services known to man, for a price, and they will fucking cut you without hesitation if you try to get out of paying them. All about The Deal. Profit > Morality

Primarily Chaotic (Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil)

Artist sorcerers/reality warpers/whatever that are more concerned with their vision of "true art" than silly things like "morals" and "human safety", and hate authority with a passion.

Saturn Deer

TROLL!!!!! IN THE FOUNDATION'VERSE!!!!! Just thought you ought to know…

The Serpent's Hand

Hate the organizations that try to constrain or destroy magical/anomalous/whatever people, and believe they should be free to do/act as they wish. Individual members or sects can be seen as good or evil.

Chaotic Good

I don't think anyone in the Foundation Universe falls under this designation. Feel free to disagree.

Chaotic Evil

The Daevite Civilization

It was a loosely-controlled society of deviants, mass murderers, and evil, demon-worshiping sorcerers, held together by their desire to spread pain and destruction.

The Chaos Insurgency

Standard GLOBAL DOMINATION nutballs that want to abuse/use anomalies for profit and power.

About the only one I couldn't find a place for was Alexylva, but that's because I don't generally know much about their works.

So what do y'all think? Feel free to post your own charts/comment on others… I recommend using collapsibles, just because of how many groups we're talking here lol

Yeah, I completely forgot about the Library, somehow. I definitely get more of a "True Neutral" vibe from the Library. It's just a repository of knowledge, the visitor is the one who uses it for good or bad reasons.

The WL itself is probably Lawful Neutral. It's a repository of knowledge that anyone can use, as long as they obey the rules. Trying to steal books or harm other visitors/residents generally has a severe penalty.

Alright, time to commit two cardinal sins of roleplaying: I'm going to argue about alignment and I'm going to argue that there is no good/evil.

1) If we're assuming there is an objective good and evil, then I think the Foundation falls into the "good" category. While their methods are harsh, and often Draconian, I think most agree that they are constantly and consistently acting for the greater good. The Foundation exists purely for the purpose of protecting the general populace, to the point that it avoid using anything it has contained, even if it could be profitable. While they certainly aren't saints, the motives are quite selfless.

2) I think one of the major themes of the Foundation universe is that there is no good and evil. Just look at black white black white black white black white black white gray. Horrible acts need to be commited to keep things contained. Additionally, in my headcanon the Chaos Insurgency isn't evil; they are just of the opinion that the world sucks, and by employing SCPs they can make it suck less. It's a difference in philosophy. While they may have gotten lost along the way, their motives are not inherently evil.

All that said, I don't really want to get into a massive debate of good vs evil, because humanity has been arguing that for millenia and come to no meaningful conclucsions.

1) You say "greater good", I say "maintain order". These may not necessarily align perfectly, and indeed have different connotations, but they could certainly be seen as two sides of the same coin. If the Foundation felt the need to go "Global Dictator" on the world in the pursuit of maintaining order and safety, I wouldn't be comfortable calling that "good"

2) Fair point on the Foundation. And I suppose we can agree to disagree on the CI, because I just have trouble seeing them as anything aside from a HYDRA/COBRA ripoff. Anyone who calls themselves the Chaos Insurgency isn't exactly painting a picture of "another type of good".

I wouldn't say this describes CI very well. My thought to their motivations is that they want to expose the world to the paranormal chaos of reality to better prepare all people everywhere to defend themselves from it.

they want to expose the world to the paranormal chaos of reality to better prepare all people everywhere to defend themselves

Aaaaand my head-canon might have been nudged in a different direction. That's much easier to palate than generic evil overlord wannabes, because like Severe said, that sort of mentality doesn't make sense.

The thing about evil people is that they most often either think what they're doing will turn out well, or they're entirely ignorant of the harm they are causing. True Evil as an idealized Snidely-Whiplash tying our hero's love to the train tracks does not exist in any meaningful sense. Everyone tries to make the right choice, all the time.

When I started acting seriously, I was often cast as the villain for this reason. I can't see villains as simply evil for evil's sake. There's always something more hiding in there, some inborn justification. They're not always good justifications, but they're always present.

1) I would disagree. Remember, they are containing something that is capable of singlehandedly ending famine, which they know has no side effects, just because it's anomalous. They horde dangerous artifacts that could easily be destroyed and cause much suffering, solely out of their own fear. And they guard normalcy for its own sake, rather than for its instrumental value.

Of course, that all depends on the writer. Some stories the Foundation features in show them as heroic, if harsh.

The Factory reminds me of when Crowley in Good Omens transforms paintball guns into real guns during a heated game: he argues that it's not evil to do that because people don't have to use them; it's their choice. I'm really not sure where The Factory stands and that's why I like it so much.

The HI is a conglomeration of 3 major faiths and an undefined multitude of lesser sects. The one binding principle keeping these cats in a herd is the shared belief that they can work together. So, Lawful seems pretty spot-on. But they are just too diverse to make the good/evil call. Certainly, they believe they are doing good work. But so did Torquemada, who probably has some disciples or at least sympathetic fellow travelers in the "Wolves". As a whole, if forced, I would have to say neutral, since any given faction or political bloc could tug the needle up or down at any given moment.

And the Fifthists as lawful? C'mon! The 5ers are chaos given tax exempt status; set to gospel choir and thermian with lead vocals by Dionne Warwick. Individual members can't even agree on their tenets, much less express them coherently.

Alexyla University seems a pretty authority-centric institution. So lawful. By the standards of our universe, they don't give appropriate thought to individual's rights or freedom, so that would point to evil. But since they aren't part of our universe, that value judgement may not apply. I'll go Lawful Neutral.

1. You raise a fair point. I guess I'm just a bit skewed by the ETDP tales lol.

2. Hrm. I can see how you would come to that conclusion, but I always had a "too complicated for an outsider to understand, but it makes sense to us" idea of their faith. And just because there seems to be a bit of a schism between the "Gospel Revival Tent" types and the "New-age hippie Happyologist" types, doesn't mean there's not inherently some dispute between their faith or disorganization. I looked at it like the difference between the various types of Christianity. We all have different points of view, but we all share at least a few universally accepted beliefs in our faith.

3. Cool. I never really read much of their stuff. Do you know of any interesting Alexylva tales/skips? I don't want to go digging through all of them xD.

I can see a schism interpretation. Diverging schools of thought is a very tidy explanation of the two styles.
But the fifthist chaos is bound in their nature.
It is the church of jive, double-talk, and word salad. Their doctrines have all the "that has to mean something" pseudo-profundity of magnetic poetry; and are ultimately just as gibberish.

Gibberish with a certain internally consistent feel, to be sure. But even the delusional ravings of the most deranged schizophrenic have a "logic" and recurring themes to them. The alignment system implies the existence of objective, absolute order and chaos just as it does objective good and evil. Internally consistent is just not sufficient to be called "lawful".

:D This is fun! I haven't enjoyed a good alignment debate since my gaming group broke up in college. Thanks!

I think Dr. Wondertainment may be Chaotic Good. He has his own sort of moral compass(FUN) that ends up creating potentially disastrous products(and sometimes people), but he does make sure to include proper handling instructions in every one of them so that the fun is not spoiled.

Really, I feel that Wondertainment fits better on a Blue and Orange morality scale… I just put him on True Neutral because he doesn't care much for following other's rules, but he will impose them on other people to promote safe Fun, and he really doesn't do anything inherently moral or immoral in the pursuit of Fun, at least in my headcanon.

Sheogorath + Willy Wonka, essentially.

And before you mention the Misters, I truly feel that they are just very, very, very lifelike toys, and not actual people. I don't really buy much into that theory that someone else proposed about Wondertainment torturing and converting people (or Foundation members, if I remember the theory correctly) into the Misters.

Well, that was a series of tales, but everyone has their own canon. But that's not important here.

While I don't think I hold the canon on alignments(that'd be Wizards of the Coast, I suppose?), I understand that chaotic is exactly the Blue/Orange morality thing. Lawful means abiding to law/authority, while Neutral is defined as the alignment of wild animals(no actual moral code, just survival). Chaotic characters disregard any conventional sense of moral for their own warped sense of right and wront, and in Wondertainment that means "FunTM". The Good part would be that he is well intentioned, if twisted, whether you believe or not that the Misters are people.

I think enough of the Foundationverse operates off of blue-and-orange morality (even the "human" sides) that I'm only confident in a few judgment calls, and that's only if they're doing what they say they're doing, for the reasons we think they're doing it:

MCF: Neutral good. Pretty straightforward charitable organization.

Serpent's Hand: Chaotic Good. They're all about freedom and being treated right, not too keen on following the rules.

I wanna say MC&D is Lawful Evil, but I can't make a solid argument for it. Maybe they're Neutral.

I can see it too. They want money, and it just happens that illegal or immoral methods are faster in most cases. If they saw a chance to do good that was inherently more profitable than doing the morally questionable alternative, they would jump at it.

I'd say that Wondertainment operates on the Blue/Orange scale1, but is trying to be Neutral Good ("fun for the kiddies!") and usually ends up Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral, depending on the toy.

Church of the Broken God sees themselves as Lawful Good (there are very, very few religions that think of themselves as evil/Evil, after all), but usually ends up acting somewhere on the border of Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, depending on the exact situation.

Marshall, Carter, and Dark are True Neutral ("We're just providing a service to our customers"). Yes, they're just in it for the profit, but they don't go out of their way to do evil (or good) things. Maybe Neutral Evil.

"Nobody" is Chaotic Neutral based on his/its actions, and who knows what he/it/they think of themselves.

That new carnival one (can't remember the name) is either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil, depending on your exact interpretation. Or rather, the people running it are, based on how they treat/exploit their sideshow attractions and customers. The actual sideshow performers are individually different.

AWCY? as a whole is Chaotic Neutral, although individual members may think of themselves as anywhere on the grid.

The actual location of the Wanderer's Library is Lawful Neutral (very specific rules that are enforced strictly and mercilessly). The Serpent's Hand thinks of themselves as Neutral Good or Chaotic Good and probably operates in one of those as well, although there may be mismatch.

The Foundation generally thinks of itself as Lawful Good ("protecting people from the things that go bump in the night, no matter what."), only in terms of the greater good, rather than regarding individual people. A.k.a. in a Knight Templar mode. Individual actions or containment procedures for specific SCPs are possibly in the Neutral or Evil ranges, although rarely/never Chaotic.

Footnotes

1. My headcanon is that Wondertainment can be summed up as "What, you humans don't find this whimsical?"

As an aside, I've noted the differences between what the GOIs think they are vs. how they act because there can be some massive disparities. As an example, I once created a character that was functionally Chaotic Neutral because he based all significant decisions on coin flips or chance, but he thought of himself as Lawful Neutral, because after all, gods are incredibly powerful and could easily prevent him from doing something they don't want, therefore everything he does is mandated by the gods and he's just following their commands. Delusions like this, and mental illness in general, are rarely addressed in most RPGs and I find that kind of leeway interesting. For that matter, games that have "magic" healing (divine magic, stimpacks, superfast healing, whatever), rarely do anything with non-injury medical issues either. What happens when the king gets cancer or has a stroke or heart attack?

I have to agree. You would figure the Policing (SCP, GOC, etc.) and Religious GoI's consider themselves Lawful Good no matter what they're doing, when in reality, it could span any of the directions of the moral compass depending on the day of the week and the actions/factions involved.

Not intentionally. He wasn't trying to do bad things, he was just letting "the gods" decide what he should do. So if "the gods" said he should spare that kobold village, he would. If they said he should destroy them, kill all the livestock and salt the ground, he would.

A random diversion:
I once read a great fantasy webcomic (whose name I can't recall, and it doesn't matter anyway because it went belly-up), and part of the reason it was great was the way it used that whole magic vs mental illness thing.

The elves were basically immortal, barring injury and illness, and also magic immune. They had modern medical science; and mental illness was just as intractable to them as it is to us irl. In comparison, the otherwise more advanced human empires didn't even bother with sanitation. It just wasn't worth it when a short prayer could cure any illness.
Half-elves were a big plot point. The genetics weren't 100% compatible, so a lot of them were born with serious physical and mental defects. Now, the humans had healing magic that normally would make a bit of homicidal delusional schizophrenia a passing inconvenience. But the hybrids had inherited enough magic resistance from their parents that the healing spells eventually wore off and they reverted.